


do not attempt to appease the monster

by bowlingfornerds



Series: tumblr prompts [23]
Category: The 100
Genre: AND IN MY OPINION, And Clarke never really left after the events of the mountain, And basically everyones ok besides Murphy, And generally no ones feeling particularly bad, Angst, Anya and Wells are both still alive, BECAUSE I DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT DEATH, Canon Divergence, EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE LIVED ANYWAY, M/M, Pain, There's an alliance with the grounders, Torture, Torture mentioned in dreams, literally no fluff, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5168612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowlingfornerds/pseuds/bowlingfornerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From an anon prompt on tumblr: murphamy 5+1 , murphy has nightmares of his time spent with the grounders every night, wakes up shouting with his scars throbbing...</p><p>5+1<br/>5 times Bellamy comforts Murphy after a nightmare and the 1 time Murphy actually believes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do not attempt to appease the monster

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a poem I once wrote.
> 
> WARNING: IF YOU DIDNT BOTHER TO READ THE TAGS, THIS FIC CONTAINS VIOLENCE AND TORTURE DEPICTIONS. I'M NOT VERY GOOD AT WRITING THEM SO HOW GRAPHIC THEY ARE IS PROBABLY PRETTY DAMN DEBATABLE. Read forward at your own risk. (But, in my opinion, I wrote a pretty decent fic and I'm proud of it.)
> 
> Enjoy.

**i.**

_There’s a face; dark and covered in tattoos, swirling designs of death and Murphy quivers at the sight. They snarl; spittle flies and their growl is still in his mind, ruminating, when they make the first cut. He grits his teeth so hard Murphy’s sure they’ll break and his hands tug on the ropes that hold them above his head. He swears, he screams and another cut slices through his arm. He doesn’t know where the main artery is but he’s sure that they’re close._

_The faces watch, impassive and uncaring, as he bleeds. Murphy feels it as a trickle at first, before the taps are turned and it’s pouring; a waterfall of blood, red like the inside of his mouth, now sticky with vomit and spit._

He wakes up crying.

Murphy’s face is wet with tears, not blood, and it’s cushioned against someone’s chest.

“Shh,” Bellamy whispers, rocking them back and forth. The nightmare is over but Murphy still cries anyway; reliving the moment in his head; an endless tape, like the ones on the Ark, over and over until it burns out. “It’ll be okay,” Bellamy tells him.

Murphy knows he’s lying so he just cries louder. He doesn’t care that Wells’ tent is next door to his, nor that Harper and Monroe will be woken up by him like the night before. He doesn’t care at all.

 

**ii.**

_He’s running from the drop ship, cursing himself for messing up his life, for failing to kill someone, which should be so easy. He remembers the look on Bellamy’s face as he hung, and he remembers the explosion that let him escape. Then there’s a grounder; his arm stuck out so it hits Murphy in the stomach. On the way down, his head catches on a rock._

_Murphy wakes up to a blinding pain; his eyes catching on the way the woman slices at his hands. His nails were only just growing back and now where they rest is a crosshatch of blood and cuts. He cries; not even screaming out for help because there is none, and there never will be any. Murphy cries and struggles at his bindings, but there’s nothing he can do and ten too many grounders standing around him, watching._

_They don’t even care about his pain as the knife drags through his skin once more. Murphy wishes that he doesn’t have nerves; he wishes he couldn’t feel anymore because feelings only bring him pain. He cries as one hisses at him for the location of the hundred’s defences. He doesn’t respond and they start on his other hand._

He wakes up as Bellamy rushes into the tent, dropping to his knees beside Murphy’s curled up body. Bellamy tugs him up to sit, and swipes at his cheeks.

“Are you okay?” He whispers, but it’s too much like the way the grounder hissed at him and a fresh wave of tears overcome him. Bellamy pulls him into his chest, rocking once more and repeating the same words over and over. “It’ll be okay,” he promises.

Murphy knows it won’t be.

 

**iii.**

_His hands are bound above his head; Murphy knows the scene without having to look around. It’s an old subway system; their dungeons and a woman walks in with skin like Raven’s but less scarred and more serene. She smiles something sickly, and crouches down in front of him. His arms and legs are bleeding and there’s a symbol carved into his stomach; the one of the Trikru, he thinks they said; the one to show that he will forever be their prisoner, their captive._

_She nods someone forward and tilts his head to look directly at her; her lean fingers holding his chin. With a start, he knows it’s Anya; and his eyes widen and his face twists into something of agony, as they extract the first nail. Murphy screams and he hates that he knows how it sounds so well. Anya’s expression doesn’t change, she just lifts the other hand and places it over his mouth; silencing his calls to something of muffled protest._

_His fingers burn but they’re not cauterising the wounds; just yanking off every nail, one by one, from his left hand. He slams his head back into the wall; trying to knock himself out; trying to kill himself; he doesn’t even know, he just wants the pain to stop. He wants it all to stop and he’s crying, blubbering like he did when he was a child. Anya is content, in front of him, and she releases his mouth, gesturing for them to stop pulling. She asks, nicely, calmly, quietly, for everything he knows about the delinquents, and he says anything he can; he lies and he swears and he slams his head back against the tiles so hard that one breaks._

Murphy wakes with a start, breathing heavily. He sits in the darkness, his stomach coiling at the thought of Anya coming to the camp that evening; she would be visiting again and she would look through him, as if she hadn’t seen him bleed over her fingers. Next to him, Bellamy still sleeps, so Murphy trudges out of his tent, out into the night.

He finds the washing up bowl and scrubs hard at his hands, at his wrists and arms until he washes away all of the invisible blood. He cries into the bowl when it doesn’t go red; when the blood doesn’t leak away from his skin and clutches his stomach, wetting his shirt with his hands. The carving burns, and the scabs along his fingers ache.

Eventually, Major Byrne, on watch, finds him, walking him back to his tent. She ignores his tears and he swipes at them harshly before pushing back inside.

Bellamy’s still not awake, so he climbs quietly into bed, curling up into a ball like always, but pushing his back against Bellamy. His arms wrap around himself, before the large, comforting ones from behind move, too.

“It’ll be okay,” Bellamy promises, half asleep in a whisper. Murphy wants it to be, but it won’t.

 

**iv.**

_A torch flickers in front of him, and Murphy struggles at his bindings. A grounder yells at him, but he doesn’t know the words that come out of his mouth. When he doesn’t respond, they heft the flame. Anya watches quietly from the back, contemplative as Murphy burns. He’s fire but he’s weak and he burns for them, instead of himself. He was a roaring fire, once; a raging one burning down a forest, but now he’s just the flicker of a candle and he’s so close to going out._

_His right shoulder takes the fire, so close to his face, so close to his hair, and Murphy strains away but only pulls on the ropes, scratching against his cuts. He thinks it’s been three days, but who’s to know anymore when he wakes at intervals, sometimes minutes apart while his torturers are still in the room, watching, discussing, sometimes hours later when the moon is only just visible through the bars in the ceiling._

_He’s so close to falling into unconsciousness; the pain overwhelming his body; but he doesn’t. He’s alone and there would be no one to wake him, no one to hold him and tell him that he doesn’t deserve it. His mother would have told him that he deserved it; her nails scratching at his skin and her bottles cutting at his forehead. Her hair was red and now it only reminds him of his own blood; so he shuts his eyes and howls in pain. Howls at the moon as his shoulder burns and the skin peels; howls like a wolf because he was always told that they were loners, and that’s exactly what he is._

“Murphy!” He’s shaken awake, finding fearful dark eyes peering at him in the early morning light.

“Bellamy,” he breathes, relieved. Bellamy nods, loosening his grip on Murphy’s shoulder and he’s thankful for it, because his right one throbs and he’s sure that it’s been set on fire all over again.

“You’ll be okay, right?” Bellamy asks, looking down at him. For once, Murphy isn’t crying, so he just nods, not really believing it. “Good,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“Sorry for waking you,” Murphy replies, turning on his side to face Bellamy. The older man shakes his head.

“That’s the thing,” he says. “You _didn’t_. I slept through that and Wells came running over asking if you were okay.” Murphy frowns.

“You look guilty or something,” he mutters.

“I am,” Bellamy agrees, annoyed. “It’s becoming normal; I’m getting _used_ to hearing you cry – how awful is that?” Murphy just nods, mute. _Awful_ , he agrees.

 

**v.**

_It’s day three and he knows it is because they’re untying his bonds. Anya looks amused from where she stands, ordering her grounder-monkeys about in foreign words. He’s tugged up before being beaten back down again. As if he wasn’t already weak enough they kick his wounds, still fresh from the night before, and shove him onto his back._

_On man holds an axe above him and drops the handle onto his stomach. Murphy blanches, clutching at the pain as if he could hold it; remove it; before another man approaches with a stick. They beat him until he’s raw and blood, as if he wasn’t already, until he coughs up blood and one of his eyes are swollen shut._

_Then a man approaches. He’s a blur to Murphy; a face tattoo, a beard, and he crouches down beside his body, blue and black, before dripping a liquid from a vile into his mouth. Then he’s beaten once more for good measure before they leave._

_The cage door shuts but he notices as the last one doesn’t lock it. They assume he’s too weak to move as it is. The sun sets and Murphy fights the feeling in his bones, like they’ll break at any moment, so he can stand and he can run._

He’s not crying when he wakes up but Bellamy is pulling him in for a hug all the same. Murphy remembers living his dreams and he remembers the pain in his stomach. It was worse than the flu he got on the Ark within the first few minutes, and Murphy knows, wincing, that they beat him after he gave them the information. They beat him when he lied and they beat him when he told the truth; there was no winning and there was never meant to be.

“It’ll be okay,” Bellamy promises, forcefully now, angrily. He knows what the dreams entail, and Murphy watches, during the day, as Bellamy walks up to greet the grounders. He’s enraged; that much is clear from the distance Murphy places himself at. Bellamy doesn’t shake their hands and he doesn’t lose the grip on his gun; no matter how much Clarke nudges him too, or Abby and Kane send looks in his direction.

Murphy knows it won’t be okay.

He knows it because he feels it in the marks painted on his skin.

 

**vi.**

_There’s a ringing in his ear and Murphy vomits blood onto the forest floor. He swipes at his mouth when he’s done, forcing himself forward on already unstable feet. Blood trickles from his eyes and he’s had a nosebleed for hours as he trekked; hoping it was the right direction._

_He stumbles and falls, groaning when his head hits the ground. But camp is the only safe place, he knows. But camp is not safe for him, and he remembers the rope around his neck and the crate being kicked out from under his feet; the person he trusted most in the world angry at the turn of events. He remembers the mud he was trampled into, and the girl, stepping off the cliff._

_So he forces himself forward because going forward means bad memories but going back means worse realities, and he’s crying because he hurts, but he’s crying because his tears are red like blood. There isn’t a patch of skin not tainted anymore and he misses the colour it used to be; misses the way his hands didn’t shake at every corner, or the way that he never felt like tearing up at every sound in the woods._

When Murphy wakes, Bellamy’s sitting on the bed, cross-legged, holding his hand. He’s not crying; which he’s been doing slightly less of, in recent times. But his face is screwed up and his teeth hurt from where he’d been clenching them.

The man in front of him kicked out a box from under his feet, and let him dangle from a rope around his neck. Murphy remembers the moment he forgave him for it as he sat up. The man in front of him had a chair knocked out from under him, swung from the air by seatbelt rope about his neck. Murphy remembers when he kissed him, was told he was forgiven, was told that it was okay. _Bygones_ , Murphy had replied.

“It’ll be okay,” Bellamy says now. Murphy knows it will be because if he can forgive a man for hanging him, everything will be okay. And if a man he hanged could forgive him for doing so; there was no way he would ever be leaving his side.

Murphy is a wolf, because while he was always told as a child that they were loners, Bellamy tells him of those in a pack; those who travel and fight together, and that’s what Murphy want to be. Murphy is a wolf and so is Bellamy; his lips travelling down his throat, pressing gently onto every scar to show that he loves every part of him.

“It’ll be okay,” Murphy repeats in a whisper.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Please talk to me in the comments so I know what you think about it! Tell me all your thoughts! Thank you!


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